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And no surveillance (including wiretapping) on Trump?

In truly progressive fashion, Chicago renamed one of its streets after a terrorist. Earlier this month Alderman Robert Maldonado submitted a proposal to name three blocks of a city street after Oscar Lopez Rivera, the founder of the Puerto Rican terror group FALN, which was responsible for 120 bombings and armed robberies in the U.S. during the ‘70s and ‘80s that killed nine and injured hundreds of others. On Wednesday, aldermen approved the measure honoring Lopez Rivera, the terrorist whose 70-year sentence was recently commuted by Barack Obama. Aldermen also voted to approve an honorary street re-naming for Puerto...

California State Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) is renewing a demand to see First Lady Melania Trump’s immigration papers — an issue Democrats first raised during the election campaign.Skinner expanded on her demand in an interview with Politico this week: “No one in the Trump operation has released any of the documentation to indicate what was the circumstance, or whether she had full legal status. … We only know they had a lawyer look at whatever papers she chose to give.”In 2010, when Arizona passed a controversial immigration law that allowed state and local law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of anyone...

A photo that appeared on Reddit last week of Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt wearing a pink “pussy hat” in the courtroom made the rounds on Twitter Monday. The knit cap, which recently made the cover of TIME, was conceived by two women in Los Angeles who envisioned “a sea of pink hats” at the Women’s March on Washington.

President Donald Trump relieved acting Attorney General Sally Yates of her duties Monday night after she directed Justice Department attorneys not to defend Trump's controversial executive refugee and immigration ban. Yates, a holdover from the Obama Administration, was replaced as acting attorney general by Dana Boente, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Yates had "betrayed the Justice Department" by refusing to enforce Trump's order, which temporarily halted the entire U.S. refugee program and banned all entries from seven Muslim-majority nations for 90 days.

The United States is often described as “a nation of immigrants.” That’s certainly true. But a more accurate statement might be that we’re “a nation of immigrants who overcame intense hostility to immigration.” (If you’re really cynical, you might add, ” . . . and then showed hostility to future waves of immigrants.”) President Trump is expected to sign an executive order halting the admission of Syrian refugees into the United States. He’s also expected to cancel visas from a curiously curated list of majority-Muslim countries. (It doesn’t include Saudi Arabia, for example.) The order would be consistent with Trump’s...

ONE OF PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S MANY CAMPAIGN PROMISES was to ”end sanctuary cities.” On Wednesday, Trump took his first steps toward that end, issuing an executive order called ”Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States." Among other actions outlined in the order, cities that do not comply with federal immigration enforcement agents “are not eligible to receive Federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes by the Attorney General or the Secretary.” In addition, the order restored both the Immigration and Nationality Act Section 287(g) and the Secure Communities Program, which are used to compel...

A growing group of Democratic lawmakers will boycott President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration Friday as a protest of Trump’s worldview and his criticism of civil rights icon John Lewis, congressman of Georgia There are now more than 40 House Democrats — 42, at last count — who have declared that they will not attend the inauguration on Capitol Hill this week. The number rose sharply after Trump tweeted Saturday that Lewis is “all talk, talk, talk” and should “finally focus on the burning and crime infested inner-cities.” Lewis, who sees Trump’s Nov. 8 win as illegitimate because of Russia’s alleged interference...

A California Republican state lawmaker is challenging the legality of a move by Democrats in the legislature to hire former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to help in any legal battles with President-elect Donald Trump’s administration. Assembly member Kevin Kiley has requested a formal ruling from state lawyers on whether the decision by Democratic legislative leaders to hire Holder and his firm, Covington & Burling, for $25,000 a month violated a provision in the state’s constitution that bans hiring outside counsel for work the state’s own lawyers can do. […] Kiley’s request came on the eve of hearings in the...

Brent Scher of the Washington Free Beacon reports that the Democratic party’s slate of nominees for DNC chair has agreed to participate in a candidate forum hosted at a restaurant owned by a rabid critic of Israel. The decision to hold it there may give the leading contender for DNC chair — the rabidly anti-Israel and one-time Louis Farrakhan backer Keith Ellison — something of a “home field” advantage. Sadly, however, it’s far from clear that any of the participants will feel out of place. (Tom Perez is the only contender who has not confirmed he will attend.) The restaurant...

Outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said he is confident that he has laid the groundwork for Democrats to nuke the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees if they win back the Senate in November. Envisioning Hillary Clinton in the White House and Democrats controlling the Senate, Reid warned that if a Senate Republican minority block her Supreme Court nominee, he is confident the party won’t hesitate to change the filibuster rules again. Such a move would be an extension of what Reid did in 2013 when he was still majority leader, eliminating filibusters (with a simple majority vote) on...

Michael SchneiderDecember 27,2016 Just a day after the cable network hoped to silence criticism on its Ku Klux Klan-centric docuseries “Generation KKK” by changing the title, the network has now canceled the show all together. In a statement, the network said it scrapped the series (which had been renamed “Escaping the KKK”) after discovering that participants on the show, including Klan members, were paid to participate by production company This Is Just A Test. “A&E learned last night from the third-party producers who made the documentary that cash payments — which we currently understand to be nominal — were made...

One of the websites Facebook is to use to arbitrate on 'fake news' is involved in a bitter legal dispute between its co-founders, with its CEO accused of using company money for prostitutes. Snopes.com will be part of a panel used by Facebook to decide whether stories which users complain about as potentially 'fake' should be considered 'disputed'. But the website's own troubles and the intriguing choice of who carries out its 'fact checks' are revealed by DailyMail.com, as one of its main contributors is disclosed to be a former sex-blogger who called herself 'Vice Vixen'. Snopes.com will benefit from...

DENVER -- A state court judge ruled Tuesday that all Colorado electors to the Electoral College must vote for Hillary Clinton or vacate their positions. Initially, judge Elizabeth Starrs said if the electors take the oath and don't vote for Clinton, they would face criminal penalties. But she later said the electors would be replaced if they don't vote for Clinton and it would then be up to prosecutors to decided whether they would face charges. The decision ensures Clinton will receive all of Colorado's nine electoral votes. Two Democratic members of Colorado's Electoral College fought to have a state...

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says Russian hacking during this presidential election cycle is as significant as the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Watergate scandal and called for a special commission to investigate. "I think this is as big a deal as Watergate, as 9/11," he told BuzzFeed at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., Tuesday. "I think they should have a 9/11-type commission. I know that [Sens.] Dianne Feinstein [D-Calif.], Ben Cardin [D-Md.] and others are calling for that. I think it’s a step in the right direction. This is a scandal that’s been uncovered.

The New York Supreme Court has ordered Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to turn over a document containing a secret agreement with other states and environmental activist groups regarding the witch hunt being carried out against Exxon and other climate skeptics. Schneiderman had fought the release on the grounds that the document wasn't covered under the state's Freedom of Information Act. But one of the targets of the witch hunt, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, filed suit for its release and the court has now ordered it.

A prominent supporter of President Barack Obama and co-founder of the Human Rights Campaign was arrested last week on charges of sodomy and sexual abuse related to what authorities said was an encounter with a juvenile male. Terrence Bean, 66, a major Democratic donor and a celebrated gay-rights activist, was indicted on two felony charges of sodomy and a misdemeanor count of sexual abuse by a grand jury and arrested in Oregon Wednesday, according to a statement from the Portland Police Bureau. Bean was released later that day on bail, pending a court hearing. Kiah Lawson, a 25-year-old identified by...

William Magear “Boss” Tweed, leader of New York City’s corrupt Tammany Hall political organization during the 1860s and early 1870s, is delivered to authorities in New York City after his capture in Spain. Tweed became a powerful figure in Tammany Hall–New York City’s Democratic political machine–in the late 1850s. By the mid 1860s, he had risen to the top position in the organization and formed the “Tweed Ring,” which openly bought votes, encouraged judicial corruption, extracted millions from city contracts, and dominated New York City politics. The Tweed Ring reached its peak of fraudulence in 1871 with the remodeling of...

BREAKING: Florida Election Employees Caught Faking 1,000’s of Stolen Absentee Ballots in Massive Voter Fraud Scheme Broward County is one of the largest swing counties in Florida. It would not take much voter fraud there to flip it. The voter fraud whistle-blower is a former Secretary of Elections Department employee and she has filled out a sworn affidavit: You can read the affidavit here. The affidavit by Chelsey Marie Smith accuses Broward County officials of filling out blank absentee ballots to officials who she saw filling the ballots out at the Supervisor of Elections headquarters. Smith said she was asked...

Madison — Taxpayers must pay $1.6 million to attorneys for Planned Parenthood and another abortion provider after courts ruled a GOP-backed abortion restriction was unconstitutional.